02 February 2013

Weekend linkdump

Just a reminder that things I post in a linkdump should not be viewed as less worthy of attention than material getting a full post. It's a mixture of things of interest only to a limited audience, or items with no pictures, or things so popular they aren't "TYWK", or stuff I want to store for perusing in detail or linking to later. But mostly a linkdump allows me to get away from the computer. Today to crank up the snowblower again, sadly...

Godchecker is a website where you can look up information on 3,000 gods, including the one you believe in.

Are you Irish-Canadian or know someone who is? Then you should bookmark "The Shamrock and the Maple Leaf, an exhibition of
Irish-Canadian documentary heritage held by Library and Archives Canada.
Here you will discover photographs, letters, books, music and other
evidence of Ireland's vital influence on Canadian history and culture."

For around $115,000, you get a
4-hour operation to install an antenna behind your eye, and a special
pair of camera-equipped glasses that send signals to the antenna. The antenna is wired into your retina with around 60 electrodes, creating the equivalent of a 60-pixel display for your brain to interpret. The
first users of the Argus II bionic eye report that they can see rough
shapes and track the movement of objects, and slowly read large writing. The
second bionic eye implant, the Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina, is a
whole lot more exciting. The Bio-Retina costs less — around the $60,000
mark — and instead of an external camera, the vision-restoring sensor
is actually placed inside the eye, on top of the retina. The operation
only takes 30 minutes and can be performed under local anesthetic.

To better control prostitution, Zurich plans to approve "drive-in sex boxes." "The prostitutes who use the sex boxes will also have to take out medical
insurance and buy a £26 licence in order to ply their trade. On top of that
they will also have to feed five Swiss francs, about £3.30, into a roadside
ticket machine each night when they clock on."

It's fairly commonplace to encounter videos of people solving scrambled Rubik's cubes blindfolder. Here's one of a man solving an 8x8x8 Rubik's cube blindfolded. The video is compressed from over an hour (about half of that study time) to show the entire process in about 7 minutes.

An article about flesh-eating beetles (dermestid beetles), with a video of their use in the laboratory.

30 comments:

A "petition to call for a Constitutional amendment " --- This is brain dead. You don't amend the constitution to retract a specific supreme court case. Get a clue. Read how it's done and spend more than one second thinking about it. That's not to say money shouldn't be out, but this notion is beyond stupid and you should know that at a glance.

I can strongly second the opinion that knowledge of shut off valves are an essential part of home ownership. My brand new (like 1 week old) water heater suffered a catastrophic failure of the inflow and outflow couplings Tuesday. Bad event, but perfect timing - I was home and awake, it wasn't freezing, I still had internet so could google the make and model for the locations of the shut off valves, and the installers had raised the new furnace (which replaced a much larger model) rather than extend the ductwork down.

I have now read the manuals for the new-new water heater, furnace, air conditioner, humidifier, and my old soft water tank.

Red and blue electrical tape (for hot and cold lines) are now in place. I'm taking pictures and labeling everything to put in my emergency file. I think it is time to write a user manual for the house.

I can vouch for the melt-ability (!?) of Canadian bills. I was waiting in line at my bank late last year when a distraught-looking gentleman rushed in and dumped a handful of what looked like dried-up cat turds on a startled teller's counter.“These are six one hundred dollar bills that my wife put through the dryer", he gasped, shoving them at the teller. “They were in the pocket of my jeans!"The flustered teller just looked at him, wide-eyed, shrugged and said: "What do you want me to do?"The poor guy was busted - out $600 just because some penny-pinching government scammers thought it'd be a cool way to save a few bucks by printing our money on what is essentially slighter-thicker Saran Wrap. Way to go, Bank of Canada! I wonder how many other poor suckers this has happened to.

Oh yes, the new plastic $20 bills have also recently been released. $10 and $5 due to be rolled out later this year. Apparently they're causing no end of headaches for vending machine operators too - and ticket machines for parking garages, etc. The machines are routinely rejecting them. Your tax dollars at work!

Best response to the ludicrous urban legends circulating about these bills is good old Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/business/money/melting.asp

If someone says bills melted in a dryer, or on a radiator, or in a car on a hot day, it's a story, no more.

As to vending machine operators, they've long had to contend with occasional changes in coin shapes and weights, and bill designs, colours, paper weights and now size and material changes. This is no different than the past, and shouldn't be a reason not to make a currency change when there are other good reasons.

Pfft! And you believe anything the Bank of Canada - a branch of a government dedicated to lying to its constituents - says? They denied there was a problem with the "twonie" (the $2 coin) for months until videos of people popping them apart started surfacing on news shows across the country.

By coincidence, I found that bullion fellow's youtube channel about the periodic table just a few days ago, and immediately told my daughter about it. She's just started physics and chemistry at school. It's great to have sites like that to help explain "stuff". And the wiki page about roulette was an eyeopener, Stan: who would have thought so much mathematics was involved? About the 666, no wonder there's a saying about that being the "number of the beast", ie Satan. After all, it's not just a handful of people who lose collectively millions of dollars/pounds/euros gambling, eh?

Always so much to explore when I stop by here and so very much in this post. I particularly want to thank you for the Pulp-O-Mizer. I quite enjoyed making one for my library blog and can see the potential for kids using it for projects at school.

LOL on those "cheat codes". a collection of common knowledge, obvious tips, deliberately humourous tips (they MUST be, surely, deliberate!), ridiculous claims and urban myths (eg. the one where you use your skull to increase the power of the signal from your key to locate your car, which is ok because it's "non-ionizing radiation")

Thanks, embeetee for the comments on the Canadian money and the static electricity; I've put addenda on those stories. But on this one, using one's skull to amplify the signal from a car key is not an urban myth; I've done it myself to lock my car from far away.

I'm absolutely convinced it is an urban myth, Minnesotastan. My own weak knowledge of RF told me so on reading it, and I didn't go any further to find support for what is admittedly my own uninformed "common sense" reaction. I did a little bit of looking for knowledgeable/informed comments, but found confirmation bias misleading me; I was attracted to those who agreed with me and dismissed those who didn't. I'm interested, so will dig deeper when I have more time to investigate.

Here's what I did. Parked my car in an open mall lot away from buildings etc, walked away while pressing the lock/unlock button on my key. When I was too far away for it to work, I placed it under my chin and pressed the button and it worked (for a significant additional distance).

Well this has taken me on quite a journey. Best I've found is this study (http://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk/home/conference/VTC10-Fall/DATA/02-05-02.PDF), which frankly is a bit dense for me (there, I said it!) but in essence says hold the fob vertically about shoulder (head) level, buttons to the side, to get the greatest range.

However, antenna placement in the vehicle is a huge consideration, and will vary from car to car. Some use pairs, some use multiples, they're placed differently, they combine different antenna shapes and orientations... So some cars receive better if you hold the fob horizontally from the front of the vehicle but vertically if you are behind it.

The takeways for me are:1) I was wrong, the signal is strengthened by virtue of being held in front of the body (presumably directionally, strengthened to the front only, but I haven't found confirmation of that)

2) the skull and position of the mouth and touching the head with the fob are of no consequence

3) you are almost certainly (but not necessarily) better off holding your fob vertically, buttons to the side, at head or shoulder level

4) the design of the antenna(e) in your car, and your position in relation to the car and antennae will have significant but unknowable impact on your success in extending the range (which would help explain why people have varying experiences). You're probably best simply to experiment so you know what works with your fob and your vehicle.

"Considerable Current" reads the sub-head part way through the story. current is amps, not volts. OK, that's a bit picayune, but it's actually the least egregious of the misapprehensions in this article.

40,000 v is high but not at all impossible with static e, for example created by vigorously shuffling your feet on a carpet (esp in a very dry atmosphere). But static e is at incredibly low amps, which is why it stings but doesn't melt you when you touch a doorknob. You easily withstand voltage as long as the amps are low...and they are. It's current that is dangerous (so don't try low voltage and high amps), and it's current meeting resistance that generates heat.

So the heat generated by his discharging 40,000v at very low amps is negligible. Plus it would be such an incredibly short timeframe discharge he wouldn't leave a trail of smouldering or burning carpet directly beneath him, much less five minutes after he left. Are we to conclude he discharged into the carpet, which somehow retained the current (ignoring the fact it's very low) and heat built up over time to create the fire??

Plus if he had discharged the static e (leaving a trail of burning carpet behind him) there'd be nothing for firefighters to measure; it's discharged. When you have static e and touch a doorknob, you don't discharge a bit with the first touch, and a bit more with the second, and so on, you discharge it all at once.

And what are they measuring with? A regular voltmeter would immediately dissipate the charge and consequently show no voltage on the meter. He's not *generating* voltage as he stands there to be measured.

General apology due to you, Minnesotastan. (Thanks, by the way, for that link; I hadn't seen that last night).

Driving to work I was thinking about my posts last night, which I fear appear critical of you for posting these, though that wasn't my intent. For a couple at least, it was my intent *to the original story and author*.

I think it's important that each of us maintain a healthy skepticism when reading articles in any media. Note I don't mean cynicism, and I don't mean we have to automatically question and critique everything we read, only that we must think about what we read and consider whether it merits ready acceptance or further thought, analysis and research. Esp with the Internet, it's too easy for simply ridiculous assertions to multiply and repeat as unquestioned fact. And I'm particularly sensitive about stories which involve basic science, often poorly reported and easily checked.

However, I say here, and I say LOUD, what I've said before: I am awed and appreciative of the time and effort you spend, the far-reaching interests you demonstrate, and the results evident here on TYWKIWDBI. This remains my favourite blog, and I take every opportunity to tell people about it =-)

Plus it is one blog where the comments are almost always thoughtful and respectful contributions as opposed to the invective that lands on most blogs and news sites which permit comments.

No apology needed. I've heard from several people that unlike other blogs they cruise, at this one they often click to read the comments because they are so informative. Healthy skepticism is a welcome commodity here.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net